Andy Kim declares victory; Tom MacArthur doesn't concede

David Levinsky @davidlevinsky

Wednesday

Nov 7, 2018 at 1:59 PMNov 7, 2018 at 9:30 PM

Kim trailed MacArthur by 2,315 votes Wednesday morning, but his total rocketed up after election officials completed a count of 6,000 of the uncounted record-high 25,454 mail-in ballots received in Burlington County. By late Wednesday afternoon, was leading the Republican incumbent by a 2,622-vote margin.

Democrat Andy Kim pulled ahead in his razor-tight 3rd Congressional District race against incumbent Tom MacArthur Wednesday afternoon, and by the evening he declared victory.

"With the vast majority of votes in and counted, and based on numbers we saw from Burlington County today, we have built a substantial lead. I am proud to announce we have won this hard-fought race," Kim said to loud cheers followed by chants of "Andy! Andy! Andy!" at his campaign headquarters in Mount Laurel. "It is an honor and a privilege to be the next congressman of the 3rd Congressional District."

Hundreds of supporters packed the building with signs waving.

"Today we have built something that will build a better future for all of us," Kim said.

MacArthur, however, was not ready to concede Wednesday night.

"This has been a hard-fought campaign and like Andy Kim, I'm ready to see it come to an end. I have always said that I will be guided by the voters of the district and there are nearly 7,000 more of them who haven't been heard from yet. We must ensure that their vote —and all of votes — are counted in a transparent way to protect the integrity of this election."

All provisional ballots had yet to be counted as of Wednesday night.

Kim trailed MacArthur by 2,315 votes Wednesday morning, but his total rocketed up after election officials completed a count of 6,000 of the uncounted record-high 25,454 mail-in ballots received in Burlington County. By late Wednesday afternoon, Kim was leading the Republican incumbent by a 2,622-vote margin.

No winner was declared Wednesday afternoon because an undetermined number of provisional ballots from both Burlington and neighboring Ocean County were still uncounted.

“We knew this race was going to be one of the toughest and tightest in the country,” Kim said shortly after midnight Wednesday morning in an address to supporters gathered at the Westin hotel in Mount Laurel.

Typically, Burlington County gets about 1,000 provisional ballots to tally from voters who may vote at the wrong precinct or district, but Burlington County Election Board chairman Joe Dugan said the number of provisionals was believed to be much higher this year.

The increase is attributed to a new law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy this summer that required any registered voter who requested a mail-in ballot during the 2016 election to automatically receive one this fall whether they requested one this year or not.

Scores of voters who received a mail-in ballot still showed up to the polls to vote. They were allowed to vote via provisional ballots. Those ballots will be reviewed by the superintendents of elections in Burlington and Ocean counties and then returned to the respective election boards to be counted.

It’s still undetermined how many provisional ballots were cast during Tuesday’s election. Dugan said the Election Board probably wouldn’t complete its count of provisional ballots until early next week.

The district is a sprawling territory that spans from the Delaware River to the Jersey Shore in Ocean County, with the Pinelands, farms, suburbs and the massive Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst military installation in the middle. It was twice carried by President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but was won by President Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Winning the 3rd District was considered an almost insurmountable feat for Democrats. The one exception was in 2008, when the late John Adler, a well-known veteran of state politics, won the open seat of retiring Republican Jim Saxton, thanks in no small part to the Obama turnout wave. Adler was unseated in 2010 by former Eagles lineman Jon Runyan. MacArthur won the seat in 2014 after Runyan announced he was retiring. MacArthur won the district again handily in 2016 and was an early favorite to win re-election this year.

But Kim managed to galvanize Democrat anger surrounding MacArthur's high-profile role in crafting the Republicans' failed health care bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and the legislation's so-called “MacArthur Amendment,” which sought to give states flexibility to reduce health care premium costs by waiving "Obamacare" mandates, including one restricting insurers from pricing consumers with pre-existing conditions differently.

The Democrat also engaged political newcomers and veterans alike to build a grass-roots campaign that raised millions toward defeating the incumbent.

According to the latest unofficial vote tally, Kim received 101,903 votes from residents in Burlington County, where the majority of Democrats in the district reside, compared to MacArthur's 69,090 votes in Burlington. MacArthur won the Ocean County side of the district, which is considered more solidly Republican, by a margin of 76,868 to 46,677.

The 25,454 mail-in ballots counted in Burlington County easily surpassed the 20,931 mail-in ballots counted in the 2016 election, which featured the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

As of Wednesday afternoon, a total of 185,176 had been counted in the county, bringing turnout up to 58 percent, the highest percentage on record for a midterm election dating back to 2006, which had a 54.6 percent turnout.

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